The present invention relates generally to the field of display stands, and in particular to support pillow display stands and methods for their use.
The commercial success of products often depends on the manner and location in which those products are displayed to the consuming public. Manufacturers and distributors often want their products displayed in store locations that are highly visible and easily accessible, such as on a shelf at eye-level and/or in a location subject to high consumer foot traffic. However, the effective placement and display of awkwardly shaped items, such as bulky or non-symmetrical products, can present unique problems.
Awkwardly shaped items can be difficult to arrange in a systemized manner. For example, they may be hard to stack on a conventional store shelf. As an alternative some have proposed to display bulky items in large bins. However, such bins can take up a significant amount of store floor space. Large display bins may also require the customer to hunt through piles of items before locating an item the customer wishes to purchase. Customers in a hurry may not bother to look for hard-to-locate products buried in a large bin or stored on a hard-to-reach top shelf with other bulky items.
One such category of awkwardly shaped items which are of particular interest are pillows, and particularly support pillows as described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,261,134 and U.S. Pat. No.5,661,861, the complete disclosures of which are herein incorporated by reference. These support pillows, and others like them, are generally crescent-shaped with an open middle region. For example, the support pillow in U.S. application Ser. No. 08/590,653 has a medial region and two cantilever arms extending from the medial region to form a substantially toroidal configuration. Because of their unique and somewhat awkward shape, these pillows can be difficult to display using conventional methods such as shelves or bins.
Therefore, it would be desirable to display various support pillows in a manner which maximizes their visibility to potential consumers, makes selection of a pillow easier, and uses a minimal amount of store floor space.
In one aspect, it would be further desirable to provide a display stand system which can be moved easily from one location in a store to another. Such a system would allow the support pillows to be displayed at different locations depending on the needs of the store and consumers. It also would be desirable to display a number of pillows in an organized fashion to allow prospective purchasers to see pillows of different sizes and/or decorative coverings. It would be further desirable to display a number of pillows in a manner which would allow a purchaser to easily select any one of the pillows from the pillow display stand for closer inspection and/or purchase without having to search through a large pile of pillows.